A fault refers to an abnormal state of a machine or a system, including dysfunction or malfunction of a part, an assembly, or the whole system. The occurrence of a fault is associated with a number of factors, which in turn is related to a number of symptoms. Fault diagnostics or fault diagnosis is the study of the relationship of fault, factors and symptoms. Fault diagnosis may be used to predict and control the performance of a system, such as a telecommunication system, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, or a human body.
A variety of methods may be used for fault diagnosis. They include such methods as time series analysis, fuzzy logic methods, neural networks, case-based reasoning, probability reasoning, and a combination of the above methods. Diagnostic algorithms representative of the above approaches are derived and utilized in various applications for fault diagnosis.
Fault diagnosis has gained considerable significance, for example, in a cost conscious aerospace industry. A particular diagnostic algorithm for an aircraft must prove itself to be advantageous from a cost-benefit standpoint. As a result, personnel such as engineers are faced with an often difficult problem of choosing a best diagnostic algorithm from among many candidate diagnostic algorithms. Despite the appeal of multiple algorithm solutions, practical applications are limited by engineering resources. The engineer is forced to pick a few among many.
Accordingly, it is desirable to implement a system, method, and computer program product by which a variety of diagnostic algorithms may be benchmarked against each other, whereby a best diagnostic algorithm for a particular application may be selected. In selecting a best diagnostic algorithm, it is desirable to implement a mechanism whereby non-robust algorithms that do not generalize well on unseen data or scenarios may be weeded out. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description of the invention and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the invention.